


Five Life Goals for the Working Country Girl

by LittleRaven



Category: Goblin Market - Christina Rossetti
Genre: Gen, Misses Clause Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 02:28:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17051333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/pseuds/LittleRaven
Summary: Five fates they never got to choose.





	Five Life Goals for the Working Country Girl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kimaracretak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/gifts).



_1_

The sun is setting. Laura follows it, only for the sake of seeing it die, finally quashed by the moon. She has risen already, the white as pale as her own flesh has become. Laura turns her face to it then, up to the light. This is what the other maids have forgotten; to be alone in the dark, until you are no longer alone, because it is with you. 

They are afraid. Even her dear sister, her Lizzie. One loss, one hurt and she’d withdrawn from temptation like a child burning their finger on the cooking fire. Laura understands. 

She can make Lizzie understand too. She wants to; under the fear there must be the same wish pulling Laura to her new vitality; her sister must want it, because they are the same, Laura and Lizzie, two red hearts beating in the same bed, always together. That is how Lizzie has always made it. 

That is how Laura knows, sitting by the brook, that Lizzie will let her in when she comes to see her, the thick wooden door pushed open, the words urging, the arms thrown about her neck, Lizzie’s neck under her fangs as she gives her her sister back. 

_2_

Jeanie is the first, to no one’s surprise. She comes back one day with eyes as golden as her hair, and they are abuzz with cries. Laura, getting to touch her before Lizzie, becomes the second; she touches the tender face with the palm of her hand and receives a tender bite, on her wrist, the blood pumping out before the change. 

Lizzie is last, standing shoulders straight. Her face is drawn tight, under the composure of her stillness, but her eyes are clear as she looks at them. 

She is waiting, and when Laura realizes, she throws her head back, hair flying, arms outstretched. They come closer, then close as they have always been, Lizzie and Laura and Jeanie, and they share the fruits of Jeanie’s discovery. 

Three. A small pack. Their fur is sleek, fresh and clean; they haven’t made their first kill. Their food is waiting, their woods are waiting, far from the farms of their milk-fed neighbors, and the wolves lope into the night. 

There is no witness, under the moon, but later the cottage door will be found ajar, and no sign of distress but the red stain on the empty clothes.

_3_

Laura sees her, sitting on her own gravestone. Jeanie is silent, more than in life, but she sits in full daylight, her feet on the dirt, her hands resting at her sides on the smooth rock. 

Jeanie looks at her, colorless, and Laura looks back before she turns away, walking slowly home. She doesn’t look behind her. 

The path is silent. No birds sing, though she hears the leaves rustle, the whispering of the long grasses against her ankles softer than her skirt, the padding of her feet as she slips through the brush and the hills back to Lizzie. 

Her sister is waiting for her, and Laura is very sure that she herself is doing the same. They are waiting, and they do not need to know for what, though Laura knows a little more than Lizzie, and Jeanie knows most of all. Jeanie is waiting too. She keeps walking. 

At the door, Lizzie lets her in, and Jeanie follows. 

Lizzie looks over Laura’s shoulder; her face matches Jeanie’s, then. She does not speak. She does not leave. She shuts the door. 

They bring back the third chair, the third plate and cup at the table. They light the fire. 

_4_

They have tried bringing their own flowers, this time. The dirt is clean and soft under their hands as they pack it over the stems; no worms, no roots, no rock. Smooth as the day they buried Jeanie. Lizzie doesn’t say it, but she thinks it and sees Laura thinking it too, hands buried in the dirt besides hers. 

There. New flowers for mourning; they will replenish them every visit, if they must. She straightens out the petals of a rose, brushing the dust away, before getting up to leave with her sister. 

The scent follows them back. 

Roses will leave their mark, as much for their sweetness as their beauty. A flower of the poets, of songs. 

They head home. 

They wash their hands, scrub at the smell. 

Their cakes are the sweeter when they eat, their water when they drink. They cannot smell the lavender pressed into their sheets; their bed is overwhelmed by the rose scent. Lizzie tucks Laura under her chin, buries her nose in her hair. 

When they wake, the air heavy with the smell of the grave, the vines brushing their window, Lizzie takes Laura’s hand, and pulls her along, outside, to join the flowers. 

_5_

Three traveling girls set off on their own ship to find a better planet, or at least a quiet moon, clean as the countryside of their distant birth. The land had been green, then; they could not now remember where it was, but they knew it had been green. 

Now it is a city, heavy on them, sweltering. Now a ball of clean metal, soaring into the night under Jeanie’s command. The air is still and silent, save for the buzz of the electronics. 

When they sleep they are by a window, the largest they can find, the cockpit. All piled up, together. Outside, through the thin glass of it, the stars look back. 

They make a life of it, Jeanie, Lizzie, and Laura. Their first stop is a watery moon, too wet for Jeanie; the second a planet of plains, flat and dry to Laura; Lizzie is left to make the final choice. 

She looks out into the dark, the space between the white stars, and her hands on the console set a course with a deliberate lack of direction. 

The suns burn and pull at the worlds they land in, but in the metal of theirs, the only heat is what they bring with them. Lizzie takes their hands.


End file.
